Faulkner said tragedy
is secondhand, and Anya tells me
I love to love a failed artist.
What a month it has been.
A massacre of children. Continuous.
A bad seed in my life, sprouting wings.
I cry in front of everyone except my therapist.
She says I am not worthless but have agreed
to the theater of my worthlessness.
That was March, though, a lifetime ago.
These days, I suspect the more I try
to be good, the less honest I am.
So I am honest. And faulty. It is May
and rain collects on a black awning across
from two smiling trees, looking like pals,
green and funny, bottles of vodka piling up
at their trunks. The first time I fucked
a new person, they whispered, I’m going to be
so good to you, a hand inside me, and I came,
a fresh habit of pleasure, being loved well.
The new person became a you, gardened
in my life and in the poem, and I felt
the order of your love, bearable
and sweet. And before I left
your apartment in Jackson Heights
for the long commute back to Brooklyn,
you looked at me and said: क्याा चीीज़ हैै तूू
What thing are you?, a Delhi phrase,
while we stared like two unknown
species, astonished to discover the other
in a familiar field. You proposed, as a joke,
in my kitchen. I said yes. I was not
in the mood for jokes or a honeymoon
period or even novelty. You are a good
queer and don’t believe in marriage, but I said
something about our grandparents,
how we are not better than anyone
who made us. When we stepped back
into the world, terror, in all its simultaneity,
continued. In my head? Yes,
I said, yes I will. Yes.